CCC Forum

It seems this year more than any other AI is being pushed particularly in the area photography. That is not to say that these technologies have not been around for years and indeed been used in other fields such as medicine and security to name a couple.

Is this going to be a help or a further deskilling of photographers?
https://petapixel.com/2020/11/03/kodak-professional-select-uses-ai-to-auto-cull-your-images/

Franke07 wrote:Is this going to be a help or a further deskilling of photographers?

Image analysis has been around for quite some time but so far no one has come up with an application which can find or set up shots and then press the button.

What we are seeing is more automation of the editing process. The question is whether this will result in a more homogenous look and feel to our images or is simply a way to reduce the time spent post processing by reducing repetitive tasks. Out of interest, I bought in to the pre-release offer of Skylum AI and have been looking at some of the demonstrations of the software. In one instance, a shaft of light was introduced where it could not possibly have occurred and in another a shot of Burano (an extremely colourful place) was hopelessly over saturated. Both arose from decisions made by the person manipulating the images and could have been replicated using more traditional software. The new tools simply made such abominations easier to create. In the case of the Burano image, the claim was made that the result reflects what the photographer had seen. Unlikely, given that such intense colours rarely exist in real life.

There is another article on PetaPixel which looks at what the companies developing the applications have to say.

https://petapixel.com/2020/11/12/ai-and ... o-editing/

Mike Farley wrote:

Franke07 wrote:Is this going to be a help or a further deskilling of photographers?

so far no one has come up with an application which can find or set up shots and then press the button.

I bought in to the pre-release offer of Skylum AI

That is true, it's proving difficult to replicate the professional photographers, photographic assistant

The early bird offer also found it's way into my inbox, my love of technology drove me to sign up for it! Firstly it was relatively inexpensive, with a money back offer. Secondly it's offer to speed up the workflow by reducing the complexity of some editing tasks appeals. If it reduces my screen time it would be a most welcome tool.

Re abominations surely this is the photographers prerogative, like an artist to add in or remove things they believe enhance the picture! Whether they work or not that is down to the personal preference of the viewer!

My hope is at the end of it all it allows us to move our photography forward, in the same way that the improvements in film, paper, chemicals and darkroom processes have done over the years.

Here's some AI art that is giving rise to artist developing their contemporary style https://theconversation.com/meet-aican-a-machine-that-operates-as-an-autonomous-artist-104381

Moderator's note: Edited to ensure the link works correctly. MF

Franke07 wrote:The early bird offer also found it's way into my inbox, my love of technology drove me to sign up for it! Firstly it was relatively inexpensive, with a money back offer. Secondly it's offer to speed up the workflow by reducing the complexity of some editing tasks appeals. If it reduces my screen time it would be a most welcome tool.

My thoughts were along the same lines, mainly curiosity backed up by the prospect of a 30 day risk free trial. I quite often make local adjustments to the tones in my images so an important aspect will be the extent to which that is no longer necessary.

Franke07 wrote:Re abominations surely this is the photographers prerogative, like an artist to add in or remove things they believe enhance the picture! Whether they work or not that is down to the personal preference of the viewer!

True. The results are abominable!

Franke07 wrote:Here's some AI art that is giving rise to artist developing their contemporary style https://theconversation.com/meet-aican-a-machine-that-operates-as-an-autonomous-artist-104381

That is plain weird and more than a little spooky. Where is the creative spark?

Mike Farley wrote:I quite often make local adjustments to the tones in my images so an important aspect will be the extent to which that is no longer necessary.

I have been joining in a few of the Zoom meetings and webinars which Skylum have been hosting for those who bought Skylum AI in advance. At the last event one of the speakers said that all the code is new and is not a reworking of Skylum 4. It should be able to do everything that Skylum 4 does currently. I took the opportunity to ask about local adjustments and I was informed that it will be possible and is due to be covered in a forthcoming online event. All in all, Skylum AI looks to be an intriguing application. Based on an e-mail I have just received, it appears that 10 December will be the launch day.

I have just downloaded my early subscriber copy of Luminar AI. Although I had received an e-mail a while back to let me know that the application would be available to early purchasers on 10 December, Skylum did not send out anything yesterday. With no instructions, I was left to my own devices on how to obtain the software and activate it. It was a frustrating experience.

From what I have seen in the previews and based on a quick look at the application in the limited time I had available, the user interface seems to be intuitive and easy to use. There are still some things which I need to find out how to do, but I hope to be able to experiment more later on today. At present, there is no user manual or other support, so early adopters are very much on their own for the moment.

Mike Farley wrote:I have just downloaded my early subscriber copy of Luminar AI. Although I had received an e-mail a while back to let me know that the application would be available to early purchasers on 10 December, Skylum did not send out anything yesterday. With no instructions, I was left to my own devices on how to obtain the software and activate it. It was a frustrating experience.

From what I have seen in the previews and based on a quick look at the application in the limited time I had available, the user interface seems to be intuitive and easy to use. There are still some things which I need to find out how to do, but I hope to be able to experiment more later on today. At present, there is no user manual or other support, so early adopters are very much on their own for the moment.

Ditto! It seem that there was a disconnect between their databases, the account I created to receive the Insiders updates it seems bore no relation to the account required to access the software.

That aside in my play with it I was not bowled over by it's performance. While it was relatively quick to build the catalog taking 15 mins to populate 23K images, the individual image load times are comparable to LR, I was disappointed with the time it took to export the edited image.

I like the simplicity of the templates, tried a few sky replacements these were almost faultless (it had to cope woodland background) I was impressed by this.

I tried the portrait templates I would have been v impressed had it not been that it only seemed to want to operate on one eye of the model!

Setting it up as a plugin within ACDSee was super simple and it worked a treat on the file I chose to edit.

From my initial use of the software it looks like this is a really good tool to speed up some of the editing processes but it's not a replacement for my main editor.

Franke07 wrote:Ditto! It seem that there was a disconnect between their databases, the account I created to receive the Insiders updates it seems bore no relation to the account required to access the software.

Yes, same for me. My main Skylum account and the Insiders account are totally separate. The e-mail advising the availability of the software arrived today.

I have just been on the latest Insiders Coffee Break session and discovered that the Mac and Windows versions of the software are subtly different. The Mac software has an interface with Photoshop, the Windows one does not! Hopefully that is something Skylum will fix. Inciderntally, those Zoom meetings are a good touch. I cannot see Adobe doing anything similar.

Franke07 wrote:............ I was disappointed with the time it took to export the edited image.

I agree. I have just tried it and it is not especially quick even with a fairly powerful i7 CPU. The demosaicing process appears to be a processor intensive activity regardless of who writes the software.

Franke07 wrote:From my initial use of the software it looks like this is a really good tool to speed up some of the editing processes but it's not a replacement for my main editor.

Bear in mind that this is the first version and Skylum is already planning updates for version 2. You have the option to do some updates in Luminar AI before switching to another editor and vice versa. So far, Luminar AI looks like a useful supplement to my editing workflow but I do need to put more images through it to discover its capabilities.

Mike Farley wrote:Bear in mind that this is the first version and Skylum is already planning updates for version 2.

Well you were not wrong about the updates, they released 1.0.0 (7348) but I have just reported an issue with it! It won't get pass the 80% mark in it's installation process. I think they should have invited more testers to the party.. Oh hang on they now have 30K testers!

Mike Farley wrote:Bear in mind that this is the first version and Skylum is already planning updates for version 2.

Well you were not wrong about the updates, they released 1.0.0 (7348) but I have just reported an issue with it! It won't get pass the 80% mark in it's installation process. I think they should have invited more testers to the party.. Oh hang on they now have 30K testers!